A Good Confession
At the time I first turned to the Lord in New York I was posed a question by my Dad, which prompted a decision which I have never, nor will ever repent from making, for it is made and settled in spiritual places, so that I can truly say this is before the feet of Jesus the Christ Himself and before His throne. The Lord has added His mercy, grace, correction, discipline and education to this, but without these next statements, which can only be a settled issue between the speaker and God Himself; I can most assuredly say none can be “saved” from themselves, “saved” from the world or spared of judgment of God. Without these things and the Christian life is nothing more than a church society, without God at its head: as we see it is becoming in our world today.
My Dad asked me long ago, “How far do you intend to go with the Lord?” The answer to this question must always be two fold, the first is: “ALL THE WAY.” Anything less than this is to deny the Lord that bought you at the price of His own blood, and is insulting to God. (If you don’t believe that: take it up with him, I dare you.)
The second is, much more complex, but just as important, and forms the whole of the Christian life and goes something like this:
“Lord, when you convince me something is you will, whether it be by the leading of the Holy Spirit in hearing your voice, or by the instruction from the scriptures in educating my soul, and when they both come into agreement, when you answer my doubting, when your will is clearly seen and known; when you bring me to the place of decision, when all that is left is the action in faith, even if I yet struggles believing and if there is still the nervous apprehension of not knowing the end, or not knowing the reason why you have asked this of me, when you have brought me to the place of decision before you, and all that is left for me to do is obey, be it know to you Lord, and remind me in that today, I have said made an everlasting decision before you that I will obey you: for you are God and I am man, you are God and I am not.
You are God, and as God you are able to speak so that I, a man, can understand you and know your heart, and your will in the direction of my life. At that time if I do not understand your ways in the thing which you ask of me, or the reasons why or how you will fulfill your plan as God and Father for the life of your creation and your child, remind me God and Father that I have laid these words before your feet: I will obey you.
I know that you are the God, and for light of whimsical reasons you do not bring afflict into the lives of your children, but that the end of all of these things is life eternal and peace everlasting; though, if for a season the circumstances of life which you command, might seem as a shameful death, discouragement, neediness, lack or pain, that as demonstrated in my Lord, the end of such things is the victory of the cross of My Lord Jesus the Christ. In that hour, if I struggle with these things and seek to avert this cross you have brought into my life: remind me of these words spoken before you, and that I have said, in all these things, I will obey you.
I know that you are all powerful, creator God, who formed my substance and who knows and sees me as I am and sees me also in a hope which is not fully revealed to me: for these reasons I commit my life to you, as is right for me to do before you as unto a faithful Creator, who is able to save to the uttermost, an extent which only you fully know my God, but toward which I strive, toward which I die and toward which I pour our my life before you, as an act of worship. In that day remind me God and Father that I have spoken these words, that I will obey you.
At these things written above some might think that I wanted to make a confession before God that was after the historical confessions, but would be “made-mine” personally. As if I might try to breathe new life into something from church history, or say something in prayer that might carry some weight with God that I might be heard on high: not so and indeed just the opposite. This is not some type written page I am producing for your enjoyment and my betterment in your eyes, but these are as close to the actual words I swore one night in prayer before God, in an upper room of the house I lived in upstate New York in the mid-1990’s. At the time, I had no idea that there were and such statements, creeds or confessions ever made in church history and no idea that these statements are scrutinized in seminaries and mulled over as to their “theological-correctness”, as is being done by you now as you have read this.
These words, this statement and the reality of it have never been forgotten, by either God or I. These words are graven in the eternal stones that stand before the throne of God, making both God and myself witness to them forever. In the practicalities of my life, God has reminded me many times that I have said them, and by so doing has refreshed this writing of these words again and again on the tablets of my heart: usually before some of the hardest decisions, most shameful events and gut-wrenching encounters in all of the days of my journey. Yet without these words, without this “memorial,” I would be farther from the will of God then I am now and whileI have not fully apprehended it (and until the day of my passing from this world into the eternal, I will never), yet I press on.
In such a statement of foolishness, binding myself to obedience to God forever without mention of reward, and without assuredly of being able to be able to perform what I spoke, this can easily be dismissed by saying “wise men know better than to make such a confession before the Holy God.” Yet, in my foolishness, rashness and ignorent statement, I have found the life of God, the power of God and THE Covenant of God lived out in my days of my journeying here.
No rehashing of someone else’s confession from church history, no study of historical confessions, no simple confessions of “I believe in Jesus,” no “going to church” and calling yourself a “Christian;” NOTHING, no not any of it, can ever match what I have found when the words above, come out of the mouth of man, before the Holy God of all creation, with the full measure of understanding that he is willfully binding himself to. If you have never made these statements, or another like it, in full faith and understanding of the consequences that it will bring in your life, check and examine yourself to see if you be in the faith. For the lack of such conviction before God, even when it waxes small in your remembrance in the course of years, is the reason why so many Christian lives have been diminished in their effectiveness for the Glory of God. A Glory of God, a Glory to God, a Glory by God which is not yours in any part, but is His alone, which He would work out for Himself in your life, or rather by His life that resides in you.
This is not a call for you to draft some document that would bind you, but it is to affect the decision of your life that you would live to the Glory and by the Glory of God. This is not a call to a “new confession” that could be contrived by you as some device to get God’s attention on you. Examine yourself, see if you are in the faith, and think not that you can manipulate God by offering something less then all that you are now, all that you have and all that you ever hope to be. God Himself in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ laid all that is He and His aside, and took upon Him death of deaths, that He might bring Glory to God, by the cross. How much more should we be willing to take up “our cross and follow him,” for if you would have any of the gospel message, any of the life of God, any of the blessing of the New Covenant, there is no other way then making and keeping a good confession before God of the things spoken of here.
Brian McClafferty
